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My siblings and I were taught to expand our minds through knowledge and to always take advantage of educating ourselves. The benefits of education were often praised in my family because my mother, Janice, realized how important it would be for our future. She would often say, “No one can take your education away from you”. Along with her emphasis in investing in our education, she stressed the importance of being a Mi’gmaw speaker. Our family stood out because we had a household of Mi’gmaw speakers and most families in Listuguj spoke English. We are aware that our language makes us a close-knit family because we share something that not many families in Listuguj have. This kind of compassion for language is evident in her work, which brings forth an awareness to preserve our rapidly disappearing language.

More recently, the community of Listuguj has been motivated to reconnect with the Mi’gmaw language. Though many people in the community are familiar with my mother, her contributions to language often go unnoticed. She works full time as a Nursery Mi’gmaw Immersion teacher with a goal of making Mi’gmaq a part of these children’s everyday lives. She incorporates other aspects of the Mi’gmaw culture in unique ways that stimulate the children’s minds, making them eager to learn. In addition to her work as an educator, she is often asked to translate various projects into Mi’gmaw. For example, in the past she has contributed to translations of a Ph.D dissertation, a Mi’gmaq/English dictionary, scripts and community journals. Occasionally, she also co-teaches Mi’gmaw Language classes with her sister Mary Ann for community members and has assisted in teaching a Mi’gmaw Language course for Cape Breton University.

A group of colleagues at the Listuguj Education Directorate came across the Indspire Educator Awards that had a category suitable for my mother’s nomination—Language, Culture and Traditions. The award was created for an indigenous educator who made a vital contribution to his/her community by inspiring people through education. Her colleagues saw this as an opportunity to enlighten her accomplishments and decided to construct a nomination package. The nomination package also included letters of support from community members who had been moved by her efforts.

My mother’s impeccable knowledge in the Mi’gmaw Language, her diligence as an educator and her willingness to help others is inspiring to many. The passion she radiates for educating the people of Listuguj, and the energy she spends in language revitalization, is key to cultural awareness. Her fundamental contribution to the Mi’gmaw Language is the reason why she had been chosen to receive the Indspire Educator’s Award. Knowing that she is a humbled woman, we are thrilled that she finally has been acknowledged in a way that she deserves.

On Friday, Jacob Leon, Madeleine Mees and I manned a booth at the McGill Powwow. We emphasized the number of endangered indigenous languages in Canada (87!) and talked about what we are trying to do to help Mi’gmaq.

Madeleine, Jacob and Douglas at the McGill Powwow

We also tried to get people excited about learning Mi’gmaq by letting them know some interesting things about the language – words that English has borrowed from Mi’gmaq, the difference between ninen and ginu, the prefix wenj- and more. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. People were happy to see that we are trying to revitalize Mi’gmaq and seemed to take real interest in the language. It was also great to see some familiar faces from Listuguj.

On Monday September 1st, MRP members Janine Metallic and Michael Hamilton were featured on 90.3FM CKUT’s show “All Things McGill“. CKUT invited them to talk about the community-linguistics partnership between Listuguj and the McGill Linguistics Department.

Janine spoke on how the project began as a linguistics Field Methods course. “In sharing a knowledge about my language, I would also expect the class as a whole to share something with the community and so that’s where the partnership really started to take hold. All the students’ projects in the class were directed at parts of the Mi’gmaq language where they could come back to the community and present. And that’s what they did at the end of the semester.”

Michael spoke on the changing nature of research and fieldwork. He discussed the unfortunate tradition in many academic disciplines where there is “a lot of taking of knowledge and not a lot of sharing” adding that “recently this trend has been changing and we wanted to be part of this changing trend where knowledge can flow both ways.”

You can listen to the show here (scroll to minute 6 for the programme to begin).

Last Tuesday, close to ninety people gathered in the Listuguj Bingo Hall to hear guest speakers, explore various booths and discuss the Mi’gmaq language. Many people put in a lot of effort into making the language workshop what it was and it was a great success. When speaking to the crowd, both Starr Paul and Diane Mitchell were able to convey a great sense of urgency about the fate of the Mi’gmaq language while at the same time gently welcoming new speakers to try, fail and try again, knowing that a language is not saved in a day.

Similarly Conor Quinn, with an understanding of all the difficulty and embarrassment that can come with learning a new language (speaking several himself), offered from his booth tangible and specific advice on how to overcome these obstacles and embrace learning Mi’gmaq.

Diane Mitchell and Houston Barnaby hashing out some details. by Lola Vicaire

Yet, while all the organized booths and activities were wonderful to see, it seems to me that the greatest success of the day was the simple fact that so many people were able to come together to think about and discuss (and speak!) Mi’gmaq. In any case of language revitalization, the efforts of individuals can only do so much. The real burden of work is on community members, both for speakers to teach the language and nurture its use and for learners to set aside time and take on the truly enormous task that is learning a language. What I saw on Tuesday was people from both camps thinking hard about their roles, scrapping old, tired ideas and replacing them with new, inventive ones. Nothing was solved for certain, nor could it have been, but when individuals come together to let each other know that they care deeply about an issue, that is what makes a community and a community is what makes change.

Highlight #1: At our first workshop we had two guest speakers from different Mi’gmaq communities—Bernard Jerome from Gesgapegiag and Jaime Battiste from Eskasoni. The speakers related their personal experiences with the language, and how speaking Mi’gmaq has influenced their life. Many students and Elders were happy to see the speeches given half in Mi’gmaq and half in English. Travis Wysote noted, “The speakers were eloquent, a natural occurrence when our People speak from their hearts.”

Highlight #2: The goal of the workshop was not only to inform community members about resources available for Mi’gmaq language-learning, but to foster dialogue between Elders and young language learners. In the second half of our workshop, the audience formed groups for discussion and talked about the state of the language in the community. Afterwards, students were asked to briefly summarize what was discussed in their group.

Students and Elders talking about the language. Photo by Janine Metallic.

“The part that I enjoyed the most was the discussions. I loved hearing what the elders in my group had to say. […] I realized after hearing what the elders had to say in our discussion group was that they regret not passing on the language and are genuinely afraid that the language will someday soon be lost. They also thought that the youth are not interested in learning Mi’gmaq which I can imagine discouraged them a bit. I don’t think I would have ever known how the elders felt towards the language had I not attended this workshop and they would not have known how us youth felt. The assumptions that we had about each other were wrong”

Highlight #3: Fun booths about a variety of topics were set up around the venue.

“The booths were interesting and ranged from more formal ones to informal ones and the information they shared was of critical importance with regards to language retention and language revitalization. Perhaps this was why the discussions were so lively.” (Travis Wysote)

We hope you can make it to this year’s workshop! Help us make language learning fun; bring your kids, your family, your pets!

The Second Mi’gmaq Language Summer Workshop is being held Tuesday August 5, beginning at the Listuguj Bingo Hall. Guest speakers Starr Paul of Eskasoni and Diane Mitchell of Listuguj will speak on the importance of learning the Mi’gmaq language and programs that help support language learning. The theme of the workshop is learning language through social media. There will be fun cultural booths set up around the workshop that include basket-making, language learning resources and replicas of Mi’gmaq language classrooms. Breakfast and lunch is provided. All events are free. This workshop would not be possible without the organizing committee of the high school graduate and post secondary students attending Mi’gmaq classes.

Only 3 weeks in and already 27 sets and 258 words and phrases ready to be studied have been created in Quizlet, the flashcard app and website! Mary Ann Metallic has been adding words after each class that coincide the content she teaches in the class. Community members from around Listuguj have lent their voices to record terms and phrases to help you learn Mi’gmaq. We welcome any community members to volunteer to record a set! Contact the Education Directorate to record.

Douglas, Silver, Joe and Diane have been working to reorganize and continue to develop content on CAN 8. This includes a more interactive user interface with more ways to test and improve knowledge of Mi’gmaq. This places an emphasis on showing rather than telling users patterns in the language.

Carol and I had talked about the Mi’gmaq language thriving in the community of Eskasoni and how nice it would be to actually visit one day. A couple weeks later, we actually put the plans into actions and we were finally on our way to Cape Breton. I’ve been there in the past and one thing always came over me…a sense of home—even though Eskasoni is an 8 hour drive away from my home in Listuguj. During my visits there, I’ve been blessed to have met the kindest people that have welcomed me into their homes. But the biggest shock of my life was hearing the Mi’gmaq language spoken all around me by the community members: children, teenagers, adults, and elders. I soon realized it was hearing my own language that felt like home. Sadly, Listuguj is rapidly losing its language. I’m 25 years old and I am one of the youngest speakers left in my community. The only people I really can converse with in Mi’gmaq are older family members (50+) and elders.

I first met Blaire Gould when she came to Listuguj to meet with my aunt Mali Ann and my mom Janice on their Mi’gmaw language teaching techniques. As soon as I contacted her in regards to our trip to Eskasoni, she was more than willing to arrange meetings with Eskasoni’s Mi’gmaq Immersion teachers. On the first day in Eskasoni, we met two sisters who were retired immersion teachers: Barbara Joe and Frances Young. Frances spoke about her younger days when she couldn’t speak a word of English and the family learned to speak English by reading newspaper articles out loud to their father. During our talk, the women had made an interesting comment: it’s up to the mother to pass on the language to their children. Alan pointed out the term “Mother-tongue”. I realized I was just given a huge responsibility. I always knew my future children would be speakers, but the level of importance in passing our language is on a much bigger scale than just personal identity (as a Mi’gmaq woman). It’s how we indentify a community. But the question is, how can Listuguj be a Mi’gmaq community when its own people do not practice traditional ways, such as speaking Mi’gmaq? Without our language, our people will be nothing more than just numbers under the Indian Act.

The second day when Blaire invited us to Chapel Island, one immersion teacher stood out most to me. Sherise is a Mi’gmaq Immersion teacher, a mother and a breast cancer survivor. She introduced herself to us as the “Queen of the Island”. She spoke with us about her experiences as a teacher, and having her own children enrolled into the program even though they are fluent speakers anyway. One of her children had been somewhat neglected in the classroom because she was already a fluent speaker. As a result, she had lacked the necessary reading skills according to the curriculum. Sherise was very shocked at this because the teacher would always praise the little girl on how well she’s doing in her class. Starr, also a Mi’gmaq Immersion teacher and Sherise’s best friend, was first to notice the child’s lack of comprehension and reading skills. This reminded me of the Mi’gmaq teachers I had in school and how they would often use me to help out the other non-speaking students. I was not only bored in class, but looking back it was not fair for me as a student. These ladies both agreed that if a student is excelling in a subject, give them an even higher level of work to complete and help them become the best students regardless of his or her language abilities.

I always looked up to Eskasoni as a strong Mi’gmaq community, but even they are worried about the declining levels of Mi’gmaq speakers. However, what I had learned from these amazing teachers through the stories and experiences shared, I’ve never been surer of my decision in becoming a Mi’gmaq language teacher. I came out of there with so many resources and advice; and it also helped me learn more about what my role will be in my own community. I’m very thankful for the work and contributions McGill has done thus far in helping Listuguj recognize the importance in preserving our language. I feel there is a now strong awareness that Mi’gmaq language in Listuguj is rapidly disappearing, and it’s our responsibility as speakers to keep the language alive and strong.

Potlotek, also known as Chapel Island, is a Mi’gmaq community about an hour’s drive from Eskasoni. The menigu (‘island’) is located right on the Bras d’Or Lake, and is only accessible by a (short) boat ride. Our second day of travels brings us here, because around this time of year Potlotek is a central meeting place for people in the Mi’gmaq community; many families from Eskasoni go to Chapel Island for St. Anne’s Mission, and have been doing so for years.

The picture painted at Potlotek is encouraging, to say the least! Stepping foot on the island means seeing families gathered together outside of their cabins, mijua’ji’jg (‘children’) running around yelling to each other in Mi’gmaw. The atmosphere is friendly and welcoming—you can really feel a sense of community here.

On the boat to Chapel Island.

We meet with Sherise Paul-Gould, Starr Paul, and Kattirin Johnson, all of whom have been teaching at various grade levels for many years in the Mi’gmaw Immersion Program at Eskasoni. Below are some memorable experiences shared with us:

1. Kattirin (Kat) Johnson is a grade 4 immersion transition teacher. Transition helps Mi’gmaq Immersion students that have been in the program since kindergarten move into English.

The year starts out in Mi’gmaq but eventually everything turns into English

Initial observation: Mi’gmaq immersion students in grade 5 were reading at a much higher level than students that were not part of the immersion program

Conducted a study with students in immersion which showed that students taught exclusively in Mi’gmaq from kindergarten to grade 3 perform better than those that are not in the immersion program. The immersion students not only excelled in Mi’gmaq, but were later excelling in English literacy (see previous bullet point).

Their research also showed that the students had higher levels of self-esteem/confidence and were more likely to get involved in extracurricular activities.

This link has a nice sum up of Starr and Sherise’s talk from FEL 2013. Look for “An Inquiry into Two Aboriginal Language Immersion Programs”

Throughout our meeting, Starr, Sherise, and Kat stressed the importance of having an immersion program. This was one of the most important, if not primary, way of preserving the language in Eskasoni. Starting an immersion program is a large and complicated milestone, but it is absolutely necessary to keep the language going. What do you say, Listuguj?

Our latest venture has brought us (Alan, Carol Rose, Douglas, Lola, and Yuliya) 739 km southeast of Listuguj to Eskasoni, a Mi’gmaq First Nations Reserve in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Eskasoni is a model community where the Mi’gmaq language is alive and spoken daily between its community members. Leaving on Sunday, we set out to meet with community members and Mi’gmaq teachers who are helping preserve the language.

The first day we met with our host, Blaire Gould, the Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey Mi’gmaq Language Coordinator. Blaire Gould works with all programs related to education and the Mi’gmaq language. These tasks include working with Mi’gmaq online dictionary, leading professional development workshops, presenting on the Mi’gmaq language programs around the continent, coordinating Mi’gmaq language programs in and around Eskasoni and between all that she organizes the bienniel L’nuisultinej conference at St. Francis Xavier University.

Retired teachers (a.k.a. The Pioneers of the Immersion Program) Barbara Joe and Fran Young and former Mi’gmaq immersion teacher Mary Propser-Paul joined us over tea to talk about their experiences teaching Mi’gmaq.

Goat Island pathway

We talked to them about our newest development, learnmigmaq quizlet, which they received with enthusiasm. Grade 1 Mi’gmaq immersion teacher Cindy Poulette, has been using a flashcard game in her classroom. The grade 1 children sit in groups while Cindy holds up a card with a picture on it. Whichever group gueses the correct Mi’gmaq word first receives a point. She liked the audio and image function that quizlet provides. Due to its versatile and accessible nature, quizlet can be used in classrooms via the internet and projected on a screen for such games. When offline, the quizlet app can also be accessed with a smartphone or tablet and any list that had been opened beforehand can be used. The quizlet interface can accommodate a game such as Cindy’s for classes of all ages and all levels.

Meeting at the Elder Centre, we talked with retired and current teachers about the state of the Mi’gmaq language in Eskasoni as well as the programs in effect and under development. Eskasoni has an immersion program up to grade 4. The immersion program is taught at the community school in Eskasoni where all courses are transmitted in the Mi’gmaq language. Grade 4 is the transition year where classes are bilingual English and Mi’gmaq to prepare them for grade 5 where all classes are in English.

Storage lodge on Goat Island.

In the afternoon we took a tour of Goat Island, a cultural walking experienced located in Eskasoni. We walked around the island which had various mini villages set up along the way, each one having different theme. The themes of the mini villages included basket-making, waltes (a traditional Mi’gmaq game) and replicas of wigwams.

A few weeks ago Janine and I attended Dr. Lindsay Morcom’s seminar on “Language Preservation, Education, and Diversity”. The following are some highlights from her seminar.

The medium is the message. We view the education system as a system that can tell you what is useful and what is important. If your language is not part of the equation , then you are told that it is not important. This was the way schools used to rob language from children in the past. But, by the same reasoning, there is is no reason that a school system in the hands of Native people shouldn’t be able to counteract the damage inflicted in the past.

There is a high correlation between immersion programming and self esteem (collective and personal). Taylor & Wright (1995) (see attached article) conducted a study with Inuit, White, and mixed-heritage participants to see the connection between heritage language instruction and self-esteem. The results showed that early heritage language education had a positive effect on personal and collective self-esteem of minority-language students. This has many long-term benefits, such as a stronger sense of personal identity, stronger connection to collective identity (feeling like you belong to a group), and positive impacts on academic success.

Aboriginal language immersion programs have an important role in language revitalization, maintenance, and education. Usborne et al. (2011) (see attached article) compared a strong Mi’gmaq immersion program with a Mi’gmaq as a second language (L2) program, and found that students in the immersion program not only had stronger Mi’kmaq language skills compared to students in the L2 program, but students within both programs ultimately had the same level of English. This ultimately shows that learning a Native language at a young age does not negatively impact the process of mainstream language-learning.

The type of language programming (immersion, L2 ) should be decided on a case-by-case basis, as it is more of a continuum: programs of study in the language, programs of study for the language, or a combination of both. Factors that should be considered: what is the goal of the community? what is the history of the community with the language? what is the status of the language now? (e.g. is it used everyday in the community? are there many fluent speakers?) Illustrated with 3 case studies: Pokomchi’, Dene, and Michif.

Native language programming allows students to learn through a culturally-appropriate lens, which is important. Just as everyone has different learning styles (visual, aural, tactile) a culturally-appropriate lens can be conducive to learning and can help propagate traditional practices, values, etc.